Taxed to Death

May 5, 2001

TAXED TO DEATH. Ah, Tax Freedom Day! The day on which we can breathe
a collective sigh of relief! The first day of each new year on which we
can start earning money for our families and ourselves! EVERY PENNY we
earn before Tax Freedom Day goes to some form of government. Unfortunately,
Tax Freedom Day comes later and later every year. A decade ago April 15th
was the day of rejoicing. Over the last ten years it has moved forward
more than two and a half weeks. This year it fell on May 3rd. If this
trend continues, thirty years from now our children will be paying taxes
for fully half the year. Is this the legacy we want to leave to our heirs?

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can
only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse
from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes
for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury
with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy,
followed always by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest
civilizations has been 200 years." This quotation sounds as if it were
written yesterday about our nation. Actually, Professor Alexander Fraser
Tytler wrote it nearly two centuries ago, while our thirteen original
states were still colonies of Great Britain. At the time he was writing
of the decline and fall of the Athenian Republic over two thousand years
before.

Bret Schundler, GOP candidate for Governor in New Jersey, had this to
say about taxes: "When you turn on the light in the morning, you pay utility
taxes. When you brush your teeth, you pay water taxes. When you drive
to work, you pay gas taxes and rising toll taxes. Before you get paid
at work, they take out payroll taxes. After you get paid at work, they
take out income taxes -- state and federal. If you are married, they tax
you for that too. And when you buy things, you have to pay sales taxes
and the seller’s corporate income taxes. You are probably dog tired from
paying all of these taxes when you get home at night, but then you have
to pay property taxes. And if these high taxes make you have to sell your
home, you will then have to pay capital gains taxes. Worse yet, if you
become sick to death of all these taxes, they will make you pay estate
taxes."

"Well, aren’t some taxes necessary?" you ask. Yes, but as Thomas Jefferson
reminded the politicians of his day, "Congress has not unlimited powers
to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated."
When he said "specifically enumerated," he meant powers specifically enumerated
in the Constitution. Any powers not specifically given to the Congress
by the Constitution were to be reserved to "The States and to the People."
Most of our tax money is simply wasted. Much of it goes to line the pockets
of politicians. More goes into programs that don’t work. Very little is
used for Constitutional purposes.

Regular readers of my column have heard this before, but it needs to
be repeated until the country understands. The Constitution gave Congress
VERY limited powers of taxation. These did NOT include any sort of tax
on income. After the Supreme Court had ruled a national income tax was
unconstitutional several times, politicians of both parties tricked the
American people into passing the Sixteenth Amendment, which allowed a
limited income tax. They have been raising tax rates and expanding the
number of people taxed ever since.

Liberals are crying bitter tears about President Bush’s "huge" tax cut.
(You know, the "risky tax scheme"?) The Heritage Foundation, a conservative
think tank, had economists analyze the proposal. Their conclusion? "The
Bush tax cut, measured as a percent of GDP, is only about one-fourth as
large as the Reagan tax cut and only about one-half as large as the Kennedy
tax cut. Both of these triggered record periods of economic growth." They
estimate that "the Bush tax cut should be almost twice as large as proposed,"
if we want to get similar results.

AREN’T WE A DEMOCRACY? Some of you may have been disturbed by this quotation
from Alexander Tytler in the previous article: "A democracy cannot exist
as a permanent form of government." That might sound pretty scary to those
who have been brainwashed into believing this country is a Democracy.
There are major differences between a Republic and a Democracy. We are,
and always have been, a Republic. We are not, never have been, and hopefully
never will be, a Democracy. Remember, "I pledge allegiance to the Flag
of the United States of America, and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands..."?
If you labor under the common delusion that the United States was founded
as a Democracy, even a cursory examination of the Constitution, the Federalist
Papers, and other writings of the Founders should set you straight.

Our Founding Fathers studied all the forms of government that had existed
throughout recorded history, and determined correctly that a Constitutional
Representative Republic was the only lasting form of government that benefited
all the people. They made it very clear that they were founding a Republic,
NOT a Democracy. Unfortunately, anyone who has studied the changes in
our laws over the past century can see that we are in danger of becoming
a Democracy.

This may not sound very democratic, but some people DON’T know what
is best for them. Before you start calling me names or smashing your monitor,
hear me out. One of the major constituencies of the liberals is the welfare
community. People who receive welfare consistently vote for politicians
who favor welfare. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Vote for the guy who
keeps the money flowing your way. But is expansion of welfare programs
in the best interest of the people receiving welfare? On the surface,
it might seem that it is. And for some people who are truly unable to
work, welfare is a necessity.

We are now paying a THIRD generation of welfare recipients not to work.
We’ve all seen how children copy their parents. Children of alcoholics
are more likely to become alcoholics. Children of professionals often
follow in their parents’ footsteps. Now sociologists are finally realizing
that children who observe their parents living off the labor of others
grow up thinking it is their right as well.

What has this to do with a Republic versus a Democracy? It serves as
an example of the stark differences between the two forms of government.
In a Democracy welfare recipients would be able to vote directly on welfare
programs, and most would vote for their continuous expansion. They would
do so even though their interests would be better served by job training
programs that would get them off of welfare. In a Republic, representatives
of the people are chosen to decide what is best for ALL the people.

You might conclude, "We’re safe, then. We have a representative form
of government in which we choose the wisest people to make serious decisions."
That is true. We are safe- for now. But there are dangers signs, and many
of them surfaced during Election 2000. Do you remember how the Democrats
harped (and are still harping) on the fact that Gore had a tiny percentage
lead in the popular vote? They are still trying to discredit our President
by saying that he didn’t receive a majority of the votes cast. (By the
way, Bush received more votes, both by the actual number of votes cast
and as a percentage of the votes cast, than Clinton did in either of his
elections.) If they cared anything about the Constitution, they
wouldn’t even bring the matter up, because they know the Founders designed
our election process specifically to avoid mob rule.

The second danger sign is the attack on the Electoral College. The Democrats,
particularly Hillary Clinton, take every opportunity to refer to the College
as "anachronistic," and have even called for a Constitutional Amendment
to do away with it. If the Electoral College is anachronistic, so is the
rest of the Constitution. Why not do away with representative government
altogether and have a monarchy? The Electoral College was carefully designed
to make sure that the larger states could not trample over the smaller
states. Like our Congress, the numbers Electors are allocated BOTH by
population and by state.

More insidious is a process that has been ongoing for decades. That
is the process of stripping our fifty states of the rights granted to
them by the U.S. Constitution, and conferring those rights on a very small
group of men and women who already have much too much power. If the people
of the United States don’t rise up and demand that Congress return powers
they have usurped to the states and to the people, our Republic will degenerate
into a Democracy. And our nation will eventually fall, as have so many
others before us.

PRAY FOR THE PRESIDENT. May 3, 2001 was the National Day of Prayer. Every
night when I put my daughter to bed, we pray for our President and other
leaders that they will rule our country wisely and well. Millions of Americans
do the same every day. One group of citizens is going further, however.
So far more than four thousands people from all faiths have banded together
and committed to fast and pray on specific days for our President for
the next four years. If you’d like to find out more, go to this website
to read an article about the group: www.cbn.com/CC/article/1,1183,PTID2546|CHID101025|CIID261909,00.html
.

JESSE...AGAIN. Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, pastor of Canaan Baptist Church
of Christ in Harlem, allowed Jesse Jackson to use his church’s sanctuary,
supposedly to apologize for his adultery. Instead, says Walker, Jackson
turned it into a "Jesse is the greatest!" rally. Upset, Walker wrote to
Jackson: "You disrespected me, my pulpit and my people. I had to publicly
apologize to my congregation on Sunday for my poor judgment in allowing
that kind of rally to be held in the Sanctuary in my absence. ... The
bottom line is that you cannot help yourself. Your addiction to the need
of media attention seems to be fatal and you have fallen into the practice
of using people for your advantage and personal aggrandizement."

FROM THE E-MAIL BOX:

"I just read an article you wrote about abortion on the Reagan.com website,
titled ’What a Difference a Minute Makes’. I appreciated the point of
view. I do believe that a woman should have a choice, but the choice should
take place before she lies down and has sex with a man. I am a Christian
and I have a lot of concerns about where this country and our moral values
are going. It’s a good thing God loves us even when we act stupid. God
bless. Nick."